The Ascendant Stars - Michael Cobley [195]
Everywhere she looked the same scenario was playing out and she saw one of her selves wave to her through the trees before she was whisked away to apprehend another creature of the Legion.
This time she appeared near one of the huge Hegemony carrier vessels which had attracted a correspondingly more numerous Legion assault. It seemed a daunting task at first since there were thousands of armoured cyborgs crawling all over the entire length of the vessel. Then she glanced over her shoulder and saw the pale host that was sweeping in with her. It was a moment made for banners and battle cries, of which there were none, apart from the yelling she was doing in her own thoughts.
The tide of Catrionas descended upon the cyborgs in a wave that rolled down the carrier’s flank, and a similar wave of disappearances swept along in its wake. Some Legion cyborgs leaped away from the rest as the vanishing rushed towards them and it was one of these that Cat laid hands on, grabbing an overlapping plate of armour. The channelled and shaped ancient energies of Nivyesta seized them both in a flash of dislocation …
When she appeared this time Segrana was hazy with smoke and filled with terrible noises, the crash of falling trees and the screams of panicking animals. This time she delayed relaxing her hold on the cyborg, trying to peer through the hazy gloom – but then the Legion creature began to stir, jerking and wrenching, and just as she let it go the smoke thinned before her and she saw the flickering yellow-orange of a tree on fire …
The next time she returned the murk was thicker and orange glows could be seen all around her. On the spur of the moment she held on to the Legion monstrosity while pushing herself downward. It was a descent into darkness since the layers of smoke were shutting out the sunlight and reflected Darienlight. Blackened tree trunks were all she saw, clouds of ash drifting on hot updraughts, but she had to release the cyborg before reaching the forest floor. Webs and whips of harsh white energy tore into it even as it fought back during its tumbling fall into funereal gloom …
With each succeeding return to Nivyesta, to Segrana, the fiery glows grew more numerous and the smoke denser. At the same time, with each new foray out into the running battles in near space there were fewer and fewer cyborg knights of the Legion of Avatars, to the point where Catriona and her host of sisters started to outnumber them. Valkyries victorious, she thought. When that stage was reached, the end came swiftly.
She could not recall the last cyborg she brought back for its execution. She didn’t remember her last sortie into the great debris fields now stretching across huge swathes of space, destined to be swept up by Darien’s gravity field. She had a hazy recollection of the immense Roug ship, the one shaped like a pouncing creature, but it was like a fragment from a dream left over when she found herself sitting on the leafy floor of the dream-palace. In the dimness she could only feel a monolithic exhaustion settling over everything as those ancient and terrifying powers slowed and sank, muted and fading. Then she sensed a familiar presence trying to communicate through a vast and grinding weariness, trying to speak but failing. Then even awareness dissolved into a timeless, bodiless river without end or beginning …
When she awoke she had aches in every limb as well as neck and back. She was lying on a pallet in a small hut, wrapped in a rough blanket that smelled faintly of herbs. She yawned, scratched an itch on her ear, thought about food … and sat bolt upright with a gasp. Tremblingly she examined her hands, her arms, legs, feet, realising with thrilling delight that she had a body again, and it was her own body!
Suddenly, vibrantly awake, she lay there for moment then stood, tugged the blanket tight about her, and went over to look out of the solitary window.
The view was of a cove full of trees and dense foliage, and a few boats bobbing on the